Sommaire pour Issue 154 de Prog

Official Progressive Albums Charts The prog top 30 albums September 2024 Compiled by 1 DAVID GILMOUR Luck And Strange (SONY MUSIC) 2 JON ANDERSON & THE BAND GEEKS True (FRONTIERS) 3 HAWKWIND In Search Of Space (CHERRY RED) 4 BIG BIG TRAIN A Flare On The Lens – Live In London (INSIDEOUTMUSIC) 5 FRANK ZAPPA Apostrophe (UMC) 6 TIM BOWNESS Powder Dry (KSCOPE) 7 PINK FLOYD Animals (PINK FLOYD RECORDS/RHINO) 8 LEPROUS Melodies Of Atonement (INSIDEOUTMUSIC) 9 KING GIZZARD & LIZARD WIZARD Flight B741 (KGLW) 10 PURE REASON REVOLUTION Coming Up To Consciousness (INSIDEOUTMUSIC) 11 ALAN PARSONS PROJECT Pyramid (COOKING VINYL) 12 PETER GABRIEL i/o (REAL WORLD RECORDS) 13 MIKE OLDFIELD Tubular Bells – 50th Anniversary Edition (UMC) 14 ROGER WATERS The Dark Side Of The Moon Redux (COOKING VINYL) 15…

If Jakko Jakszyk’s music career ever ended, he’d make a great impressionist. An hour-long conversation about his fantastic new autobiography, Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair?, sees him mimicking everyone from Sir Richard Attenborough to Michael Jackson, both of whom are among the dozens of gobsmacking cameos in the book. It tells the twin stories of his journey from teenage prog fan to latterday member of King Crimson, as well as the moving, sometimes frustrating saga of his attempt to track down the woman who gave him up for adoption as a child. Not for nothing is it subtitled ‘The Unlikely Memoir Of Jakko M Jakszyk.’. What made you want to write an autobiography? I think it was finally discovering my father after 60-odd years of thinking about it,…

“The Kick Inside was the first album I ever got. My dad bought it for me, on cassette, for Christmas in 1978, when I was six. I’d seen her on Top Of The Pops and thought, ‘That’s it, I want to be her.’ She was like this cool, charismatic big sister with this otherworldly voice. It reminded me of Snow White and Disney. I was so young, and it didn’t sound like the pop music around, like the Bay City Rollers, so I was getting to grips with the arrangements, its progressiveness and being conceptual. “With her lyrics, I would think, ‘What’s she on about?’ [laughs]. Only later did I grasp the adult themes, and the darkness of her imagination. I became obsessed with the album for years, and it…

///Light RIPCORD RECORDS Manchester’s Civil Service are very much moulded in the image of 65daysofstatic. But beyond that, there are lashings of math-rock complexity and post-punk discomfort to rouse their instrumental compositions. Having already proved an inventive bunch on previous EPs, they’ve grown into themselves on their debut LP. Fans of slow-building and reverb-soaked songs that reward patience with unpredictable, mood-changing turns will find plenty to admire here, for they’re not trying to reinvent the post-rock wheel. Rather, they encapsulate everything that makes it great. The shoegazing She Never Would Retreat… lays on thick, knotted, twin guitar atmospherics pivoting on a screeching breakdown and wading into aggressive-yet-ethereal waters. Their Lines Of Communication Severed uses quirky compositional techniques to tell its story as sturdy rhythms are severed by sharp lead guitars…

Catching A Fire RUNE GRAMMOFON Snapping at the heels ofthis year’s epic Mythical River, this live session – recorded in 2017, but newly released – sees Oslo jazz-rock trio Elephant9 augmented by 77-year-old guitarist Terje Rypdal. A pioneering spirit in Norwegian music with countless solo and international collaborative releases to his name, Rypdal’s sinuous tones dovetail perfectly with E9 keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, bassist Nikolai Hængsle and drummer Torstein Lofthus’s brand of organic, improvisational expression. Like their previous work with Dungen guitarist Reine Fiske, the chemistry of an extra instrumentalist allows them to take chances when tackling both written and Typical is Fugl Fønix, freewheeling passages. against whose frantic pulsing the guitarist’s notes seep beneath the fray with undulating, radiant shafts of light, spreading a harmonic balm over the turbulent surfaces…

Goat ROCKET RECORDINGS Though the shock of the new that initially surrounded them has dissipated, wilfully enigmatic Swedish collective Goat’s intoxicating blend of Afrobeat, krautrock, elements of funk and dollops of prog made them one of the stand-out practitioners of the wave of psychedelia that washed across the last decade. And while the eponymous title of their sixth album would suggest a thinning of ideas, the evidence is very much in the opposite direction. With a greater emphasis on increased production values, Goat sound at their most muscular as they ramp up the most joyous and head-spinning aspects of their music. The wah-wah guitar at the heart of Dollar Bill is as creamy as it is mind-bending while Goatbrain’s driving funk riff and chanted vocals coalesce with a floating flute…

Gryphon Live – A Sonic Tonic TALKING ELEPHANT Recorded during their 50th anniversary tour in 2023, this two-CD set fizzes with so much irrepressible energy and wit it’s impossible not to smile as the quintet romp through an uplifting career-spanning selection. Famed for their fusion of folk, early music and rock, brandishing crumhorn, recorder, bassoon and other seemingly eccentric instruments back in the 70s, the quality of the band’s output soon quelled any accusations of gimmickry. Humorous interludes, knotty counterpoint, exotic harmonies and passages of quirky-jerky rock, often within just one song, are delivered at a head-spinning pace here. The slow-burn coda to the instrumental A Bit Of Music By Me typifies the group’s punctilious composition and arrangements as trilling flute and yearning violin are underpinned by bass, spacious percussion…

Hiding In Plain Sight THE LASER’S EDGE As one of the driving forces behind US proggers Tiles, Chris Herin brings that same talent and tenacity to his significantly radio-friendly (and guest-laden) first solo collection, Hiding In Plain Sight. Reflecting on his father’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease, Herin’s strongest quality here is his touching introspectiveness, particularly on Wilderness Years and A Wrinkle In Time (two lusciously melancholic pieces elevated by the delicate and soulful voice of Randy McStine). The softer Living In The Night and Safe House (Isolation) similarly shine with Moody Blues-esque wistful orchestration, yet the record isn’t an entirely sombre and elaborate art rock affair. Warning Signs and The Heart Of You, for example, find singers Michael Sadler and Peter Frampton bringing hard rock feistiness and accessibility to the…

Dusk Blossom NESTEDSHAPES.BANDCAMP.COM Like his bandmate Ross Jennings, Haken keyboardist Peter Jones has decided it’s time for a musical vacation. But whereas the singer hooked up with Nick D’Virgilio and Neal Morse for an album that owed much to CSN-style West Coast music, Jones seems to have headed to the haunted rooms of a ruined mansion and then on to an experimental military installation, all soundtracked by a glitchy old cassette of Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada. Eerie atmospherics, wonky electronic rhythms and discordant samples are the order of the day on these darkly cinematic instrumentals. Light has a spooky musical box-like figure playing throughout, conjuring up dust-filled rays of sunshine fighting through torn curtains to illuminate the faces of tiny, creepy porcelain figures. Collapse pulses with paranoia, like…

Hin Helga Kvöl CENTURY MEDIA If Sigur Rós embody Iceland’s ethereal, enigmatic grandeur, their countrymen Sólstafir represent its darker, more igneous side. Hin Helga Kvöl is an album of deep contrasts, shifting between the sonically aggressive and the oddly comforting. If the heads-down title track and Nú Mun Ljósið Deyja’s quasi-blast beats and animal roars might stray too close to extreme metal for some tastes, they’re offset by the gothic, slow-burning Sálumessa – Comfortably Numb caught in a snowstorm at dusk – and the shapeshifting Grýla, where the blizzard of guitars gives way to coruscating beauty, adding an chilly Icelandic twist to the usual post-rock tropes. Then there’s closer Kuml, which mixes dramatic, Heilung-style chanting and mildly incongruous bursts of saxophone without making a fool of itself. Aðalbjörn Tryggvason’s…

Live Earth Songs THETIRITH.BANDCAMP.COM Since reforming in 2010, unashamedly old school prog revivalists The Tirith have steadily cranked up their creative momentum despite not being in the first flushes of youth. After releasing three studio albums, they’ve done the quintessentially 70s thing of releasing a live album, recorded at shows in Leicester and Rotterdam. And it has the ingredients to serve the same dual roles of those classic on-stage collections – a compilation that showcases not just the songs but also their vibrancy as a live act. Live Earth Songs achieves both of those goals, most immediately in the muscular Wishbone Ash-like riffs and twin-guitar touches that frame Go The Drifter. Elsewhere, the organ-enhanced thunder that builds around A Leap Into The Dark/The Autumn Of Our Days opens out into…

Hidden Mysteries TRILOGYUK.BANDCAMP.COM A hard-edged power trio active in the 80s neo-prog period, Trilogy seemed a good bet to break through to a wider audience and snag a major label contract. As it was, their recorded output at the time amounted to a Friday Rock Show session and a track on Elusive Records’ Fire In Harmony album. But 40 years later, Trilogy are gigging again, and as a reminder of how sorely overlooked they were, here’s a compilation of the (high-quality) demos they recorded for various labels during 1983-84. The title track is the song that featured on Fire In Harmony and was the best thing on it, a tense, terrific chorus. Their name tightly-coiled rocker with a might have referenced ELP, but Rush are the obvious influence here, from…

Bass maestro Colin Edwin plays with dub/psych artist Gaudi in his Gaudi Kosmisches Trio, and if ever a name perfectly conjured up a band’s sound it’s this one. Completed by guitarist De Palma, GKT spark up a fat, funky, arty, krauty one on debut album Torpedo Forward (Curious George), recorded using vintage studio gear, of course. These three masters of their Kraft are perfectly matched on this all-analogue 70s/80s trip – it’s fantastisch. Multi-instrumentalist Tony Lowe’s wide-ranging CV runs from Toyah Willcox to Pet Shop Boys. Silver Waves – Astral Dreams (sunncreative.com) is the ninth album from his ESP Project, and it’s a beautiful, melodic, rococo gem. Louise Browne’s ethereal vocals add feel throughout (Curious Dreamer; Love Returns) while spacey instrumental Life Pod lets Lowe and band show off their…

Michael Kulikowski SONICBOND There’s no shortage of literature dedicated to Roxy Music, but Sonicbond’s Every Album, Every Song series gives the chance for US academic Michael Kulikowski to actually drill down into their essential body of work, in search of details many band biogs would skirt over. As other books in this series have shown, though, a variety of approaches can be taken, from forensic or musicological analyses of key changes and instrumentation to studio minutiae. Thankfully Kulikowski recognises it’s not just about the music when assessing Roxy’s seismic cultural impact. He offers insightful analysis of why elements of the Roxy world, such as those extraordinary album covers, are also a key factor in what made them so special, but also, from an American’s perspective, why they were so scorned…

VENUE THE KESWICK THEATRE, GLENSIDE, PA, USA DATE 13/09/2024 Jon Anderson has been one of the most beloved figures in progressive rock for roughly 55 years, and in contrast to many of his peers, his signature abilities and enthusiasm remain wholly intact. Tonight’s two-and-a-half-hour performance is outstanding proof of that, as Anderson and the Band Geeks do a phenomenal job recreating numerous Yes standards alongside showcasing a few pieces from their first collaborative LP, 2024’s True. Anderson knows exactly what his audience want, so he devotes all of the first set (and much of the second) to impeccable renditions of nearly a dozen Yes classics. From the summery gracefulness of Yours Is No Disgrace and the spiritual magnificence of And You And I, to the feisty catchiness of Roundabout and…

VENUE ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL, LONDON DATE 17/09/2024 After a five-year absence, US powermetal legends Symphony X have returned to the UK with just one date, on an autumnal evening in north London. While the band seem to dip in and out of periods of inactivity, it’s refreshing to see them finally back in regular action – touring across North America and subsequently all over Europe – and the atmosphere at tonight’s show is certainly a welcoming one. Opening with the title track from 2011’s post-apocalyptic-themed Iconoclast, they take no time at all in kicking things off for the packed-out room as Michael Romeo shreds his guitar over the rhythm section. It seems like he’s played every note in existence already, but there’s still plenty more to come! Following a fine…

Hello and welcome to the latest issue of Prog. There’s a fair bit to say this month, so I will crack on. We explore Kate Bush’s wonderful debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside, this issue: the album that birthed a phenomenon. Kate’s whole story is quite remarkable in itself, but Jo Kendall looks back to when it all started and how that fantastic debut came to be. And Kris Needs recalls his meetings with Kate throughout the early 80s, offering a rare insight into what this most remarkable of artists was really like in her early days. Our Kate coverage starts on p28. I’ve been fortunate enough to spend some time with David Gilmour over the past few weeks, and through that have met Ben Worsley, who is playing guitar…

“Dave was doing his guardian angel bit… he was great, such a human, kind person – and genuine. [He] put up the money for everything. It must have cost a fortune, but he didn’t want anything out of it.”Kate Bush She was the baby of the family, born in Bexleyheath in 1958, but in her elder brother John’s black and white snapshots of her aged between eight and 12, dressed up and posing in various places around the extensive family plot of East Wickham Farm and their seaside retreat near Margate, Kate Bush’s sweet little visage often shows a deep, pensive look that’s beyond her years. Kate – then answering to Cathy – was taking everything in. Her semi-rural upbringing on the border of Kent and south-east London was a…

“As a keen viewer of Top Of The Pops 2 throughout my childhood, I was instinctively drawn to Kate Bush’s eccentric dancing, down-the-camera stare, and supernatural swooping vocal. I might never remember for sure if my bedroom mirror performances at the time were influenced by her TV appearances, or if we just happened to naturally share that crazed interpretive approach, but either way, I wanted to be just like her! “The Kick Inside is a collection of songs unlike anything I’d ever heard in my manufactured-pop youth. It instantly appealed to the theatre kid in me, and music and visuals like Kate’s have always left me believing that most artists just aren’t trying hard enough - this record really sets a high standard for us all to aspire to. “There…

Opeth aren’t usually a band given to guest features, but The Last Will And Testament proved a concept so ambitious it’d take a cast of characters to bring it all to fruition. Ian Anderson is the most obvious, providing critical narration that shapes the album’s narrative as well as a cheeky flute solo on §4 and §7. “We didn’t ask him to do that!” Åkerfeldt points out. “We’d originally spoke about him doing the narration for the record and he was like, ‘Well, did you want a flute solo?’” “It was overwhelming, hearing him on the final record,” Åkesson admits. “I’d already written that solo section when we first came up with the song, so we never knew we’d have a flute in there.” “He’s a genius,” Åkerfeldt says. “People…

“We see prog as a broad church. To me, a band that dabbles in a lot of genres is as prog as you can get. I don’t think there should be a template of, ‘This is prog: push this button and you get prog.’”Chris McMahon Originally formed by brothers Paul and Chris McMahon in Sheffield way back in 1978, Haze have been a fixture of the music scene in a career spanning six decades, albeit with the occasional interregnum. While their longevity is impressive, it is by no means unique within the progressive world in 2024. But, to cut to the chase, do the ever-eclectic Haze regard themselves as a prog band or not? Lead vocalist/guitarist Paul McMahon confronts the question head on without demur. “It’s the closest [description]. We’re…

Impostor! 7D MEDIA Imposter syndrome: the plague of self-doubt. Although dubbed “the Jimi Hendrix of violin”, Joe Deninzon – who’s been playing with Kansas since 2023 – suffers from it, and now he’s wrapped it up in an album with long-term band Stratospheerius. Impostor! doesn’t tell a linear story, but plot points are presented in a high-flying jazz-rock/melodic mould with nods to classic prog. Take the bubbling overture Voodoo Vortex II, a syncopated stop-start instrumental that’s Watcher Of The Skies in overdrive, while Outrage Olympics takes down cancel culture via the medium of prog-pop. The title track features thrilling Vivaldi-type bow strokes, and Deninzon’s vocals shape up well in the style typical of US soft-prog. Saga’s Michael Sadler leads on ballad Storm Surge, but the tune slows the LP’s momentum.…

My Role In The Show CARBON MOON RECORDS While he might be best-known to Prog readers as the man behind folktronica project The Little Unsaid, this Yorkshire-raised, London-based artist has always been a versatile operator, who has turned his hand to West End musical score soundtracks. On this second album under his own name (following 2022’s Music For A Film That Doesn’t Exist) he deserves to raise his profile considerably as a solo performer. Although it opens with Ceremony, a pillowy electric piano reverie, there’s always an edge of unease surrounding Elliott’s songs. Even as the upbeat, acoustic-led Joyride! seems to offer a positivist call to arms, there’s a ghostly gust of ominous backing vocals offsetting that titular buzzword every time he sings it. On tender piano ballad Perfect Tense,…

Limits Of Language MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES After 20 years of defiantly doing their own thing, and in the process establishing themselves as one of Britain’s most consistently inventive bands, Field Music return with an album of off-kilter art-rock and progressive pop that rivals anything they’ve previously done. But while the deconstructed 80s-indebted sound they’ve made their own remains, Limits Of Language is darker and more mysterious than before, evoking visions of a moody strip-lit world, an ambivalent futurism. The texture of the songs is also more electronic, with hard washes of synth throughout. The Brewis brothers are masters of delivering precise hits of pleasure – opener Six Weeks, Nine Wells is intimate and suspenseful before bursting into a controlled explosion of a chorus. The title track uses urgent Morse code piano…

The New Sound ROUGH TRADE It was a dark day for fans of avant-garde provocateurs Black Midi when singer and guitarist Geordie Greep confirmed the end of the band. Thankfully, the group’s imprint is all over his debut solo album The New Sound; it’s a signature that seems to have largely emanated from their former de facto leader. With its spasmodic time signatures, subversive wordplay and vaudevillian vocal delivery, opening song Blues could easily have appeared on his old band’s Hellfire or Cavalcade albums. What’s different is that there’s more Greep to go round. The fruits of his irrepressible creativity come undiluted on Holy, Holy – where his bandmates might have blanched at forays into yacht rock with pitch-bending synth solos, here he’s free to indulge. The New Sound is…

Shining CENTURY MEDIA In the quarter of a century since starting life as a death-doom band in the Finnish city of Jyväskylä, Swallow The Sun have let their love of prog slowly seep in. The five-piece’s ever more expansive sound, together with the growing complexity of their arrangements and 2015’s three-disc concept piece Songs From The North, all attest to that. But their most progressive characteristic is their inability to sit still. Always seeking change and reinvention, they follow 2021’s emotionally and musically heavy Moonflowers with a record that’s more accessible than anything they’ve made before. While the melancholia remains, the aptly-titled Shining finds light within the gloom, resulting in their most positive-minded songs to date. “A smoother sound that still retains progressive edges.” Here, they’ve enlisted British producer Dan…

In The Face of the Unknown UNICORN DIGITAL Huis’s highly accessible, thoroughly melodic new album will delight those familiar with their work and hopefully entice many others to investigate. Mystery multi-instrumentalist Michel St-Père is very much in evidence, particularly via some sterling, fluid guitar lines, but it’s held together by singer Sylvain Descôteaux’s rich voice, interrogating the fretful lyrical theme. World-weary highlight Crossroads begins with the ticking of an actual clock and throws some sombre, late Floyd-esque reflections, 80s Rush pop nous, and more-ish monophonic keyboard squiggles into a very agreeable mix. Elsewhere, the epic melancholia of the 11-and-a-half minute Chaos begins with a haunting, whistled refrain like a 60s theme, before soaring off through myriad sections, borne further aloft by tightly harmonised vocals. The airy thrust of Westminster Bridge,…

Onism KOYOBAND.COM There is a bonus track on Koyo’s Kickstarter-funded third album called Existential Crisis, and that title perhaps hints at Yorkshire quartet’s situation while making this follow-up to 2020’s You Said It. After their momentum slowed due to the pandemic, and amid a creative impasse, they regrouped around the jam sessions they run for musicians in their home town of Leeds. That sense of falling back on organically created riffs and hooks is palpable on Onism, and the effervescence with which they have broken out of their malaise is often a joy to behold. The urgent rush of a new single, La Cucharacha is a case in point, as an agitated variety of funk rock is punctuated by the titular chant in Spanish. It’s followed by a slower groove…

Dookietown CHERRY RED Pointedly released in the year of a US presidential election, and even more pointedly centred around the idea of what happens to clowns once the show is over, the six-track Dookietown – released as a 10” vinyl – is a welcome addition to The Residents’ ever-expanding canon. Originally commenced in the 90s but then abandoned, it embraced the idea of a trailer park where circus performers went to retire. While compiling their recent Wormwood collection, the group rediscovered it and set about reworking and re-recording the unfinished tracks, resulting in this collection. Peppered with raspberries, car horns, sinister laughter and applause, Dookietown is deeply unsettling. Delivered throughout in clown-like varispeed vocals, the sense of drama and melancholy courses through the material. The title track (‘All the clowns…

No matter how weird and wonderful prog metal becomes at its fringes, there will always be plenty of bands that cling loyally to the Dream Theater blueprint. Occasionally, one of those makes an album that transcends that self-evident, primary influence. Sweden’s Paralydium made a superb start with their Worlds Beyond debut in 2020, but follow-up Universe Calls (Frontiers) is a sizable step forward. Fervently melodic epics such as The Arcane Exploration Parts I and II tick all the big-budget prog metal boxes, but the Swedes’ subtly unique musical traits come through loud and clear. New vocalist Alexander Lycke is a multi-octave revelation on the stirring Caught In A Dream, perhaps motivated by the fact that his new bandmates can definitely play a bit. Similarly epic, but using far fewer notes,…

A Thousand Pokes FROM HERE MUSIC From the haunting death-drones of Dublin’s Lankum to Tamsin Elliott and Tarek Elazhary’s cross-cultural collaborations, the contemporary folk scene is electrifying in its adventurousness. London duo Stick In The Wheel certainly belong in that mix, too - their fourth studio album is funny, sharp and always fascinating. Like its predecessors, A Thousand Pokes is anchored in London, partly because of singer Nicola Kearey’s unvarnished accent, partly because it was written in various capital-specific locations, including a pub in Whitechapel and former weaver’s townhouse. The result is a record that has one foot in the 14th century and the other in the 21st century. It’s an engaging juxtaposition – where Crystal Tears arrives in menacing waves of atonal noise, What Can The Matter Be feels…

The Verge IS IT JAZZ? RECORDS The Verge met at Trondheim’s Norwegian University Of Science and Technology while enrolled on its course for elite jazz performers, so it’s unsurprising that their part-improvised, live-in-the-studio debut offers few easy hand-holds. In less capable mitts, tricky and antsy instrumentals such as Hyperreality and the Zappa-like The Blast Supper could become car-crashes, but guitarist Emil Storløkken Åse, saxophonist Aksel Rønning, bassist Alf Høines and drummer Ingvald André Vassbø have chops to spare. Jazz is by no means the only touchstone here, though. The aptlytitled nine-minute closer Patterns For Meditation begins with gorgeous guitar arpeggios reminiscent of early Rush, while the filmic, unsettling Emils Låt/Postludium (‘postludium’ is Norwegian for a piece of music played after a main work) moves at glacial speed, its crazed sax…

Mike Batt BONNIER BOOKS In 1972, Mike Batt received his first big royalty check of £11,000. Instead of investing it in a house, he self-financed a symphonic war concept album called The Big Revolt. Skint, but in possession of this mighty prog rock suite influenced by Led Zeppelin and Prokofiev, he saw no takers. Around the same time, he started writing songs for a children’s TV show that he’d become synonymous with for the rest of his life: “My first hit was with The Wombles and so I became known for the rest of my career – in Britain at least – as the ‘Wombles Man’,” he writes in this autobiography. Batt is philosophical about such perceptions, despite being a gifted songwriter, orchestral arranger, producer and music mogul. To that…

Mark Wilkinson TRIOUNDERTHESURFACE.COM Back in August 2023, Prog received an email from the artist Mark Wilkinson, best known in these circles for his enduring work with both Marillion and Fish, extolling the virtues of Dutch trio Under The Surface. “They are very different to any band I’ve ever seen, but a touchpoint might be Sigur Rós, i.e. uncategorisable! The comparison is only in this regard; Sanne sings in a kind of made-up language mixed in with old Dutch,” Mark wrote. “There’s something very special going on here.” Duly intrigued and then captivated by the sound of the band’s recent Miin Triuwa album, we’ve since featured Under The Surface within these pages, and, at time of press, they were due to appear at this year’s Summer’s End Festival, a review of…

VENUE O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN, LONDON DATE 21/09/2024 From playing modest pub venues in 2010 to tonight’s “homecoming” London show at the 2,000-plus capacity Forum, Haken’s resolute commitment to their vision, married to a rare level of musical ability, has helped elevate them to the upper levels of the international prog metal food chain. Billed as ‘An Evening With …’, the band promise fans the entirety of 2023’s Fauna “and a whole lot more”. Spoiler: they deliver! Channelling Fauna’s animal concept, some fans have raided the dressing-up box – the audience is peppered with cat ears, deer antlers, unicorn horns, bear and monkey masks, and even a few tiger onesies. One intrepid fan has gone for the explorer vibe, donning a pucker pith helmet. Maybe they’re hoping to be spotted by…

VENUE POBLE ESPANYOL, BARCELONA, SPAIN DATE 27/09/2024-28/09/2024 The return of Spain’s premier prog festival is positive news for the community. After six years away, the two-day event is back at Barcelona’s open air museum, Poble Espanyol, this time in a different nook of the historic location, which provides a more intimate setting but one where the festival’s vision hasn’t been toned down. Italy’s Kingcrow are the ones with the honour of kick-starting the party, and with the sun beating down their brand of modern prog metal, their sharp rhythms and glossy choruses lay down the mantle. They’re solid rather than sensational. Hometown darlings Obsidian Kingdom perform their 2012 album Mantiis in full, flashily flying the flag for Spanish prog with songs that careen from prickling post-rock to screeching, discordant metal.…

VENUE THE CAMDEN CLUB, LONDON DATE 13/09/2024 Steven Wilson says Tim Bowness’s Powder Dry is “the best and most creative” of all his albums, and it’s arguably the bravest, too. Having made the jump to Kscope Records, Bowness flirts outrageously with the post-punk and industrial music he enjoyed as a teenager growing up in Warrington. If that’s unexpected, then so is the choice of venue for his album launch: a subterranean restaurant-bar with table service offering Creole cuisine and cocktails to keep the palate wet. Before Bowness’s full band take to the stage, Eno collaborator and sonic texturalist Peter Chilvers plays some gorgeous, shimmering synthesiser music that’s the very antithesis of the common or garden Friday night warm-up playlist, and then Tim Bowness jumps on stage and joins him for a…

VENUE THE BEDFORD, LONDON DATE 15/09/2024 Assumption, dear reader, is very often the mother of all fuck-ups! Prog isn’t the one here who looked at the poster of this prog all-day event, spotted the logo and photo of a black-clad Message From The Ravens, and assumed we’d be seeing some kind of goth/prog metal band. How wrong we were. The Hastings all-female quartet are nothing of the sort! The band weave wondrous tales flecked with folk and even country, while their four-part vocal harmonies seduce and beguile. Occasionally keyboard player Hannah Dennard busts out a flute which lends a proggier air to their sound, but in all honesty they’re just great regardless. Former Wildflower and founder Siddy Bennett, who supported Robert Plant in her previous group, leads the band through…

VENUE CANTLEY PARK, WOKINGHAM DATE 26/08/2024 Over a decade ago, Wokingham Festival started as a local food market that ran over the August bank holiday weekend for those who wanted to get away from the mayhem of the nearby Reading Festival. It’s now a music festival in its own right with a selection of progcentric music scheduled on the bank holiday Monday. Opening the day is Steve Hackett collaborator Amanda Lehmann who plays an assortment of lighter, folkier tracks. Her charismatic voice carries the performance as she relies entirely on her own musical ability rather than that of any backing band. Storm Deva play to a somewhat light audience as many of the festival-goers don’t seem to want to move the 50 metres between two stages, but the duo sing their…

Send your letters to us at: Prog, Future Publishing, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London, W2 6QA, or email prog@futurenet.com. Letters may be edited for length. We regret that we cannot reply to phone calls and we cannot always respond to individual messages. Find us on facebook.com under Prog. TRIBAL TALES Many thanks for your excellent interview with Jon Anderson [Prog 153]. It brought back happy memories of my idle youth and becoming acquainted with Yes. As does his wonderful new album with The Band Geeks: it’s both fresh and nostalgic. Yes were the soundtrack of my formative years. My introduction to their oeuvre was Yessongs. I knew nothing of the band before then, except by reputation. In a small record store in Reading, the guy behind the counter reverently handed me…

Author and Prog contributor Joe Banks has updated his book, Sideways Through Time: An Oral History Of Hawkwind In The 1970s and it’s being published on October 31 via Strange Attractor Press. Previously only available as a limited run companion to Banks’ acclaimed biography of the venerable space rockers Days Of The Underground, the new reprint has been expanded with additional interviews including Dave Brock, Terry Ollis, Dave Anderson and Del Dettmar. Now spread across 240 pages, it features 34 interviews in total with bandmembers, managers, crew, and assorted technicians. Banks also heads up All Hail Hawkwind: A Celebration Of Our Greatest Space Rockers, a discussion that promises an afternoon of “amazing stories, astounding sounds and incredible images.” Joined by journalist Allan Jones, writer Cathi Unsworth and designer Malcolm Garrett,…

“I came to England in ’65 from the US army. I’d always wanted to be a photographer, but I struggled with finding opportunities to do that. I finally started making money in 1968 photographing naked ladies for the burgeoning men’s magazines of the day, Men Only and Club International. By the time of the shoot, around 1977, 1978, I was transitioning into advertising and learning how to create special effects from scratch. “I’d met Steve Ridgeway in the men’s magazine days, and now he was an art director at EMI. He got the Kate Bush commission, so he came to me to shoot it. Kate was unknown, and I’d been sent a tape of her music to hear before the shoot. It was fairly accomplished, but it was a bit…

Redefinition MARKBARRON.BANDCAMP.COM This is Canadian multi-instrumentalist Mark Barron’s third full solo album. With a focus chiefly on guitar, Redefinition mixes instrumental tunes with songs, touching on everything from heavy guitar rock to fusion and classic prog tropes. Opener Praeludium is a big power metal instrumental. Closer To Me is a power pop-tinged song about pain and struggle, yet ultimate triumph over adversity. Leap Of Faith is a slightly funky slice of high-octane prog-fusion with the merest hint of Spock’s Beard, and Rift comes across as a more muscular Asia at points. While not primarily a singer, Barron turns in some strong vocals where needed and – maybe it’s something to do with him being Canadian – sounds like James LaBrie at times, never more so than on the airy yet…

The Purpose Paradox BUTLER RECORDS/V2 RECORDS Dilemma’s 2018 album Random Acts Of Liberation was their first in 22 years. Now with frontman Jermain van der Bogt – aka Wudstik – and bassist Kristoffer Gildenlöw on board, they deliver a superior successor in The Purpose Paradox. Opener Sanctuary establishes the blueprint of intense yet spacey instrumentation and soaring vocals, with a captivating blend of interlocking keyboard and guitar riffs complementing dynamic rhythms and impassioned singing. The rest of the album doesn’t deviate substantially from that formula, but there are some notable change-ups, especially on Thunder, a mostly delicate ballad whose gentle arrangement allows Wudstik’s harmonies to take centre-stage. Allies and multipart closer Outer Light are similarly modest and vulnerable compared to the hectic empowerment of the other tracks, yet they’re amped…

Life In The Wires INSIDEOUTMUSIC Adystopian reality where the individual is suppressed and controlled and where actions are constantly under observation? A lone protagonist discovering a dissenting voice calling itself ‘Livewire’ via an old radio, who then dreams of escaping his unsatisfactory existence and tracing the source of these subversive broadcasts? Not a revolutionary narrative framework, perhaps, but Frost* mainman Jem Godfrey can be forgiven for any imagined similarities between 1984 and the concept that underpins his band’s fifth album, Life In The Wires. “Elegant, complex, multilayered and brilliantly conceived.” Yet not everything is clear cut and predictable about the world of central character Naio and where his story takes us. Godfrey weaves in threads such as social media manipulation and flash-mob mentality which helps to provide a modern-day, contemporary…

Live At Ramsgate Music Hall ‘24 SPENCER PARK MUSIC They’ve made some cracking studio albums in their 14-year existence, but The Fierce & The Dead’s forte is playing live. In turn, their live discs – 2017’s Field Recordings, 2019’s Live USA 17 and the 2020 three-track Live At The Hope And Anchor – also kick tush. This latest live collection shows off TFATD in a crisply recorded set-up. They broke with their instrumentals-only tradition in 2022 when bassist Kev Feazey revealed himself to be a creditable alt rock singer and are now joined by another voice, Tom Hunt, also on keys. Veering into dark electronica on 2018 LP The Euphoric, there’s an extra layer of atmosphere and weight at various places in the set, although the Big Black-like Magnet (In…

Mordant Lake HUNGERSLEEP There is a comfort zone for progressive singer song-writers that can be hard to escape. On his sixth album, Grice stays squarely within it, but with a certain amount of room for manoeuvre. These are songs that drip with world-weary romance and melancholy, but with performances that revel in the low-key and the left-field. Occasional resemblances to Radiohead and The Pineapple Thief aside, Mordant Lake exists in a world of washed-out photographs, autumnal mood-swings and muted fury. Offer You’s blissful melodies and breezy gait are offset by Grice’s urgent pleas (‘I don’t know what I have to offer you…’), and that same blend of tuneful affability and simmering tension gives the best of these songs undeniable charm. There are flashes of prog-adjacent inspiration amid the singer-songwriter studiousness. BJ…

Relativity HAWKLORDS Hawklords were formed by Dave Brock and Robert Calvert in 1978 during a period of Hawkwind inactivity, and then reanimated for a benefit gig in 2008. With guitarist/keyboard player Jerry Richards picking up the baton, they’ve kept going, having purloined the secrets of the mothership. Indeed, Relativity is the sound of a Hawkwind from an imagined future or maybe the sonic essence of a previous line-up lost in space. The current, Richards-led line-up transcends any suggestion of being a mere tribute act: they share far too much of the same DNA to be anything but an errant sibling. Speed Of Light surges with an injection of the Stones at their grooviest, while the title track is hooky and full of vitality, its squelchy synths and freewheeling oscillators having…

Bringing It Down To The Bass FLATIRON RECORDINGS There’s not enough space to list all the musical greats Tony Levin has played with throughout a stellar career. Perhaps because of his perpetually in-demand status, he’s recorded just a handful of true solo albums - Bringing It Down To The Bass is only the seventh to bear his name alone. Like its predecessors, this is an eclectic mix of the esoteric and extrovert, underpinned but not dominated by his unfussy on-point technique. The title track’s burbling organ and jabbing horns slides down nice and easy, while Uncle Funkster revels in the interplay between Levin’s Stick and Vinnie Colaiuta’s rhythms. Boston Rocks boasts jagged contours defined by Mike Portnoy’s explosive salvos and Earl Slick’s propulsive guitar, and Coda sees Linnea Olsson’s cello…

Optimistica TRANSGLOBAL RECORDS Robeone is the solo nom de plume of Robert Schindler, veteran US keyboard player and current member of prog duo Zoom. Owning an abundance of keyboards, including many vintage models, he employs them to produce all the sounds on Optimistica. Purely instrumental, the tracks tend to feature programmed drum loops repeated under a chord progression and/or bass line while Schindler embellishes and explores on various keyboards over the top, utilising a number of different styles. There’s a certain retro vibe to it all. Broken Days and No Clue suggest some of those 80s fusion albums where the artist dispensed with real drummers, the title track is lively jazz with a Keith Emerson-esque piano introduction, and languid ballads Billie’s Heart and Possibly Blue float around with synths aping sax,…

PowerNerd INSIDEOUTMUSIC In a bid to free himself from a tendency to overthink everything, Devin Townsend wrote PowerNerd in 11 days. While it finds him largely jettisoning anything remotely proggy, it still fits into the broader Townsend Musical Universe, a place defined by the credo ‘anything goes’. He roars out of the gate with the rollicking title track, a headbanging party anthem, but that’s followed by a heartfelt exploration of the process of grieving in Falling Apart. That contrast defines the album; the bombast and manic exuberance lower the listener’s guard, allowing Townsend to sneak in emotional sucker punches like the sonically blistering Knuckledragger’s look at the allure of alcohol as a means of numbing emotions. The heavy tunes display the Phil-Spector-goes-metal wall of sound that’s his trademark, yet…

Yessonata CHERRY RED Rick Wakeman has had a productive career adapting and arranging his pre-existing material for piano. His extended medleys of Yes songs have proven popular with fans and this latest foray finds him extending numerous themes and motifs from the group’s output and crafting them into two continuous side-long suites. Yessonata is coupled with 1975’s The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table, condensed into The King Arthur Piano Suite. It’s fascinating to listen to the parts rippling out from his fingertips, illuminating new sights through what might be regarded as a very familiar path. With tunes divorced from their usual array of electronic settings, this stripped-back presentation never lacks impact, confirming the strength of the writing. One of the most striking…

Mark Marrington SONICBOND The slightness of Mark Marrington’s book, and indeed Wendy Carlos’s discography, takes nothing away from the importance of the artist in question. 1968’s Switched-On Bach was an influential game-changer, proving that synthesisers could be used for more than just novelty purposes. Carlos continued to push boundaries and defy convention with soundtracks such as A Clockwork Orange and Tron, and she was groundbreaking in other ways, too. Her gender affirmation is brushed over here, with Marrington more keen to explore the musician’s transition from the analogue Moog to the GDS digitaladditive synthesiser. Where musical and technical detail is concerned, this book is a triumph, whether it’s the genres explored on the global music-adjacent Beauty In The Beast or the extensive hardware and multifarious voices of Peter And The…

VENUE LAFAYETTE, LONDON DATE 21/09/2024 SUPPORT LILI REFRAIN A double bill of shamanic prog is here to bewitch a sold-out Lafayette. Opening is avant-garde priestess Lili Refrain, who dons thick robes and face paint. Her vocals are just as “Nordic folk” as her appearance, and her voice fills the venue with melodies akin to those of Wardruna, Heilung and Skáld. Everything else onstage, however, is pure modern-day prog. Refrain uses synths, electric guitars, drums and looper stations to build stacked dark rock hymns. They’re slow-burning immersive pieces that frequently reduce the audience to a reverent silence. That spell only breaks between songs, when Refrain giddily explains how loopers work for far too long. It’s a speech completely at odds with the mysterious, hypnotic persona she presents when she’s actually playing.…

VENUE MUZIEKGIETERIJ, MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS DATE 24/08/2024-25/08/2024 It’s been six years since the last iteration of Pelagic Festival, which sees a selection of bands from the label’s roster perform over one weekend. This time, the event has moved from Berlin to Maastricht’s Muziekgieterij, a stunning venue with huge ceilings and impeccable acoustics. There’s also plenty of space for merchandise and the country’s fantastic beer selection, making the event’s new home perfectly suited for all the prog, post-rock and doom-laden antics we’ve come to expect. Playgrounded take to the small room on the Saturday afternoon and fill every corner with a beautifully rich, atmospheric post-rock soundscape laden with dark, alluring sounds that crescendo to an explosive peak. Later on, And So I Watch You From Afar play new album Megafauna in full…